Blog comments are an important mechanism for readers to interact with the author, provide suggestions and discuss issues with other readers. A blog with a lively community of commenters is an excellent sign that your readers are engaged in your content. Anything that makes it easy to comment will make it that much more likely people will be interested in engaged with your ideas.

At Launch Academy, one of our major projects is the breakable toy, a personal project where we can apply the web development skills we’ve learned and use the product as a portfolio piece. I’ve been kicking around the idea of creating a review website for pre-workout supplements for the past few months and decided to use this opportunity to build it. I believe it’s an ideal project for me to apply what I’m learning and push myself to create something useful. I’m excited to embark on this project since it combines my love for fitness and technology while preparing me for my career in web development.

Yesterday was Launch Academy’s first ever Ship it! Saturday, a day-long hackathon with the goal of creating something of value and launching it. Current and past launchers as well as members of the Ruby community in Boston were in attendance. It was an excellent way to use the skills I’m learning and switching gears for a day to refresh the mind.

Campaign Delta at Launch Academy included acceptance testing and outside-in development, a follow-up to unit testing and rounding out my knowledge of test-driven development. I expect this organized approach to application development to reduce a lot of the anxiety and frustration around software development that I’ve experienced in the past.

I just completed my first week at Launch Academy and it’s already been a transformative experience. One of my biggest takeaways from this past week is that software development is more about the human brain and its capacity to solve problems than it is about machines.

About this Blog

Technical marketers are a product of the digital revolution. They use compelling content to convert minds, measure their efforts and keep up with the latest tools to constantly improve and drive business value. The Techie Marketer is the personal blog of Alnoor Pirani, Principal Sales Engineer at HubSpot, and convers a wide range of topics in digital marketing. His mission is to help the technical marketer solve marketing challenges through technology and to spread the word about the technical and inbound marketing movements.